Sharing the love for Epic play

[Jolly Giant]

I've noticed there's a lot of people that are very negative to high-level D&D ( ) and as the DM of campaign with characters with ECL around 30, I thought it would be cool to show them (and everyone else!) how such a campaign can be at least as much fun as low-level play.

What I'd really like to see is all you EN-Worlders who DM or play in an Epic campaign give everyone else a glimpse into that campaign, give us a clue to why YOU love Epic D&D. Who are the PCs? Who are there enemies? What sorts of plots are you or have you been involved in? What kind of monsters have you encountered?

Any or all of the above would be great! Maybe you could even tell us about one or two particularly memorable events?

Of course I'll lead by example. I'll start typing up some highlights from my own campaign right away!

PS. Why isn't there an EPIC icon to mark threads with?!?

 

[S'mon]

Well, I liked my deity-level campaign in 1e/2e, but 3e's Epic rules make my head hurt, especially the stat blocks. OK for PCs who've worked their way up from low levels, but doing up Epic (N)PCs by the rules looks like it would be an Epic chore.
The Epic spell rules look painful too - in fact even non-Epic 9th-level spells seem much more powerful than their 1e/2e equivalents - Teleport Circle makes it very easy to transport armies, while True Resurrection makes it very hard to keep anyone dead. *breathe*

Since you asked about good stuff - in my deity campaign I loved being able to expand the scope of the game hugely, do whatever took my fancy - vast wars, terrible spells that destroyed armies, countless different worlds and planes, a sense of the vast age and scope of the Multiverse. I draw a lot from Moorcock, but I found for this 'epic' play I was using a lot of science fiction for inspiration - bad guys change the past using the Sceptre of Eternity in a plot similar to STTNG ep 'Yesterday's Enterprise', to save the day the PC deity must fight super-boosted alternate-universe versions of rival demon-gods Lolth Graz'zt & Hel; or the scenario where an ancient artifact of the lost Malgedan multi-planar empire had to be recovered from their ruined homeworld Malgedus, in a vault guarded by the unstoppable Mercury Golem based off the villain in Terminator-2. Deity politics and battles between PC & NPC gods can be fun, as well as monsters more powerful than whole pantheons, entering the human Multiverse to suck its energy dry (the Intruders), high-magic deities & quasi-deities struggling to adjust to a low/no-magic Cyberpunk Earth while seeking the Sword of Kas - and later struggling to establish their own religion there by appearing on daytime tv chat shows... Worlds in peril, human and Wolfen armies in the hundreds of thousands clashing in bloody battle while their race-gods do battle above them; PC gods fighting Wotan, evil deity of the Third Reich in a medieval 20th-century Earth's version of the Battle of Britain...

 

[Jolly Giant]

Ok, here goes. I'll start with the characters. They began as pirates (4 years ago IRT), but have transformed drastically through the campaign.

Captain Karu; CE servant of Erythnul. A half-fiend human barbarian/ravager; took a couple of rogue levels after falling out with the other ravagers. Later joined a company of blackguards and even later became a Warrior of Darkness (BoVD). Currently he's going through a homebrew PrC that essentially let's a character with the half-fiend template gain more and more fiendish traits. Essentially, he's just been getting more and more terrible and eeeeeviiil throughout the campaign!

Marion; NE fiendish human sorcerer 6/dragon disciple 16 (T&B version)/dragon mystic 4 (5 lvl PrC from Dragon. Not sure I got the name right, but it gives full sorcerer spell casting advancement and improves some draconic abilities.) She is a worshipper of Tiamat, has grown to huge size (thanks to the epic dragon disciple class). She's currently waiting for her EGGS to hatch; the result of an affair with a red great wyrm...

Alrou; NE fiendish greyelf wizard/shipmage (PrC I got off the net, don't know who actually made it...) He's at casterlevel 25. Claims that worshipping a new deity every day of the week makes him the most religious of them all... Basically follows Karu and the gang because of the money and power it gets him. Recently involved in a sordid affair with an Epic succubus...

Rasputin; NE fiendish dwarf lich cleric of Nerull 20/Hierophant 3. Could have been a couple of levels higher, but he's aiming to become a demi-lich and has burned a lot of XP making soul gems. He recently discovered pain-extractors (BoVD) and now has 3 of them running 24/7...

Silver slize; NE drow rogue 21/void incarnate 4. On the run from the oppressive matriarchy of his home town. Like Alrou, he's basically in it for the money and the power (and the freedom!).

Oh, and they're all devine rank zero!

What's kept them together and kept them from backstabbing each other is the incredible number of powerful enemies they've attracted. They've basically angered every good-alligned organization IMC, and a few evil ones, so they need powerful friends to stay alive.

They've pretty much left the material plane behind now and are instead cruising the planes in a colossal flying, planeshifting ship. They have a crew of 130-140 orcs, goblinoids, kobolds, ogres and kaasta. Most of the crew are at ECL 14-19, and even have their own PrC; Crew Of Captain Karu! I won't tell you what they call it for short...

Ok, enough about the characters. Next I'll share a few memorable moments from the campaign. But not so many that this thread gets moved to Story Hour, I hope...

 

[Jolly Giant]

doing up Epic (N)PCs by the rules looks like it would be an Epic choreQUOTE]

Oh, it is, S'mon, but it's fun too!

Plenty of truely Epic events in that deity campaign of yours. Sounds to me like you'd have no trouble pulling off a 3.x Epic campaign...

 

[Driddle]

I think it's good that someone has finally started a thread about sharing our love for Eric.

 

[Psion]

I ran my group into epic levels for a bit. It was interesting but... exhausting. There is much less support for epic level play and I just don't have that much time for thoroough preparations, which IME are much more time intensive than lower level games.

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I am running an Epic adventure at the moment. The PCs were created at 18th level to be run through Bastion of Broken Souls, and when we finished that everyone wanted to carry on.

One of the players took over DMing and ran an epic adventure which involved returning a mysterious diamond-that-turned-into-a-child to Celestia which we could only do through a specific portal. Lots of tough bad guys were after us the whole time and we had a terrible time dealing with our first epic monster (a thorciasid).

Once we'd completed this quest, I became the DM again. The adventure started with the PCs being summoned to Nerof Gasgal's palace and being banned from the City of Greyhawk due to the number of inns that got trashed in the previous one. The PCs are currently on a quest to recover the Sceptre of Good and the Book of Wee Jas from Abysm (Demogorgon's palace). So far, this has involved a trip to Sigil and information gathering on the Plain of Infinite Portals and in Zelatar. I get to use all my Planescape stuff again which is cool.

The characters are 22nd level and mostly good, although one of them is a cleric of Wee Jas. They have been having an easy time of it, but things are about to get tougher (I think). I've generally been adding templates and class levels to existing creatures, but it is very time consuming and hard to judge. (I'm not sure how well the CR system works at this level). I'm going to try and simplify the stat blocks going forward (eg only list skills that are going to come into play) to save some time. I haven't used any epic magic yet.

Cheers



Richard

 

[S'mon]

Plenty of truely Epic events in that deity campaign of yours. Sounds to me like you'd have no trouble pulling off a 3.x Epic campaign...

One problem I can see in adjusting to 3e (my current 3e campaign is at 13th/14th level so no Epicness yet) is that my 1e/2e deity campaign maintained challenge by the mostly linear (rather than geometric) power increase by level and an emphasis on 'mutual vulnerability' - Thrin might be a lesser god with a Wardpact vs Swords, but when he encountered the Scarlet Brotherhood champion Orlok the Assassin (based off the old 2000AD Judge Dredd Orlok character), Orlok wielded the Vorpal Axe of Imperial Suel which could have easily cut Thrin's head off (17+ on d20!) so there was some panic there.
Likewise, low-level Arasaka Power Armour Troopers & their automatic 40mm grenade launchers could do hundreds of hp damage in 1 round, as 1 1e deity Thrin had 399 hp (or x2 on home plane) and could easily be killed by a grenade volley doing 10d6/hit.

In 3e the convention seems to be that low-power opponents should never seriously challenge high-powered foes; hence '0 XP for -8 CR'; the way hps continue increasing until characters have thousands of hps; or at the extreme I've seen people on ENWorld insisting that low-level spells should be ineffective vs high-level characters - they find it offensive that a 2nd level Silence can block 9th level Sonic attacks, or a 2nd level 'hold person' can paralyse the 20th level Fighter.

 

[RichGreen]

In 3e the convention seems to be that low-power opponents should never seriously challenge high-powered foes; hence '0 XP for -8 CR'; the way hps continue increasing until characters have thousands of hps; or at the extreme I've seen people on ENWorld insisting that low-level spells should be ineffective vs high-level characters - they find it offensive that a 2nd level Silence can block 9th level Sonic attacks, or a 2nd level 'hold person' can paralyse the 20th level Fighter.

Well, I don't find this offensive at all -- it's just that the save DCs are too easy for the party to make. In my game, I used quite a lot of vrocks, hezrous and glabrezus to attack the PCs, but their attack bonuses were so low they needed a 20 to hit the party's monk and paladin. I've since learned that the ELH is right when it says that creatures with a CR more than 4 less than the average party level will be ineffective.

Of course, there is nothing to stop a spellcaster using heighten spell to make hold person or silence a 9th level spell.

Cheers



Richard

 

[Mystery Man]

Hi,

I am running an Epic adventure at the moment. The PCs were created at 18th level to be run through Bastion of Broken Souls, and when we finished that everyone wanted to carry on.

One of the players took over DMing and ran an epic adventure which involved returning a mysterious diamond-that-turned-into-a-child to Celestia which we could only do through a specific portal. Lots of tough bad guys were after us the whole time and we had a terrible time dealing with our first epic monster (a thorciasid).

Once we'd completed this quest, I became the DM again. The adventure started with the PCs being summoned to Nerof Gasgal's palace and being banned from the City of Greyhawk due to the number of inns that got trashed in the previous one. The PCs are currently on a quest to recover the Sceptre of Good and the Book of Wee Jas from Abysm (Demogorgon's palace). So far, this has involved a trip to Sigil and information gathering on the Plain of Infinite Portals and in Zelatar. I get to use all my Planescape stuff again which is cool.

The characters are 22nd level and mostly good, although one of them is a cleric of Wee Jas. They have been having an easy time of it, but things are about to get tougher (I think). I've generally been adding templates and class levels to existing creatures, but it is very time consuming and hard to judge. (I'm not sure how well the CR system works at this level). I'm going to try and simplify the stat blocks going forward (eg only list skills that are going to come into play) to save some time. I haven't used any epic magic yet.

Cheers



Richard

Sounds like a really fun campaign!